Sam Winchester and the Purloined Pet
by dragonflybeach
Summary: Sam was always petting strays and feeding them whatever he could scrounge up so they would follow him home. Dean wishes he had stuck with dogs and cats.


A/N - It's all DallasCon's fault. And because you know that Sam would be the kid who always tried to adopt strays.

* * *

For years, Dean Winchester was convinced Satan himself had left that copy of Charlotte's Web in their motel room.

At the time, he was thrilled. He had been reading the same few books to Sammy over and over for months, and Sammy had nightmares when Dean told him bedtime stories about things Dad hunted, even though Dean always made Dad the hero of the stories.

But they found the tattered old paperback in a motel room in Kentucky or maybe it was Tennessee on the way to their latest new home in South Carolina. Dad had gotten a job with a crew remodeling a factory that made drinking straws and plastic forks, and apparently there were plenty of vengeful spirits in the area to keep him busy on his days off.

The boys found themselves deposited in a ragged old single-wide mobile home two miles outside the town of Six Mile, SC. Dad was glad they were in the middle of nowhere, where they couldn't even see their nearest neighbor, and only had to worry about bears and rabid possums, rather than drug dealers next door or men down the street who stared too long at the boys.

But, no parks or other kids to play with or even cable tv left Dean and Sam without much to do.

Even worse, their school was one of the few places where kindergarten still got out two hours before the rest of the elementary school, so Dean had to worry about Sammy being alone in the afternoons. It wasn't that he was afraid Sam would get into trouble. It was because Sam didn't like being alone. His first sentence had been a parroted "Watch out for Sammy!" indignantly barked at the older brother who tried to leave him in the other room to watch The A Team without an almost two year old plastered to him.

That was probably why Sam stole the pig.

Their school bus stopped about half a mile down the road, in front of a farm owned by people named Johnson. Of course they were, because half the people in town were named Johnson. They had cows and horses and chickens and goats and pigs and ostriches, because believe it or not, there are people who eat them.

So on Tuesday afternoon, Dean came home to find Sam watching Transformers with a piglet in his lap.

"Sam, why do you have a pig?" he asked, because that's what a big brother should do.

"It followed me home." Sam replied solemnly.

"Why did it follow you home?" Dean asked.

"Because it likes me!" Sam beamed.

The pig grunted. Or squawked. Or something.

"Sam, it's a pig! It's not like a dog! You don't just pet them and they follow you home!" Dean insisted.

Although they might. He really had never studied much on pigs. But he wasn't going to tell Sam that. Dogs, however, he was sure about. Mostly because Sam had been petting them so they would follow him home regularly over the past few months.

"This one did!" Sam shouted.

"Sam!" Dean cried in what he hoped was his best impression of Dad's Don't Give Me Any Shit Voice. "Is that the Johnsons' pig?"

"It used to be." Sam grinned. "Now it's my pig."

"You can't steal someone's pig, Sam!" Dean huffed. "Especially not around here. It's like the Middle Ages here. They probably still hang people for stuff like that!"

"I didn't steal him!" Sam insisted. "He followed me home!"

"He just crawled under the fence and followed you when you walked by?" Dean put his hands on his hips.

"He was at the fence." Sam explained. "I stopped and petted him and he sniffed at my jacket. I still had some cheerios in my pocket from breakfast, so I gave them to him. And then he wiggled under the fence and started following me. When we got almost home his feet got tired so I had to pick him up and carry him like you do with me sometimes."

The little brat turned his puppy dog eyes up to ten and poked out his bottom lip.

"We have to keep him, Dean." he continued. "He doesn't have a spider to tell people that he's Some Pig. They're gonna make him into bacon and eat him."

"Sam, he's not your pig!" Dean argued.

The pig squealed.

"You're scaring him!" Sam accused with a thunderous look, wrapping his arms protectively around the piglet. "He's my pig now. I'm gonna name him Wilbur and I'm gonna teach him how to paint like that pig Arnold on tv and nobody will ever make bacon out of him!"

"You can't keep it, Sam!" Dean groaned. "Pigs are supposed to live on farms! We live in motel rooms! We don't have a pen for it and Dad is sure not gonna let you put it in the car."

"But they're gonna make bacon out of it!" Sam shrieked, tears threatening to spill.

The pig squealed again.

And someone knocked on the door.

Both boys froze, looking at one another.

The knock came again, along with a male voice asking "Hello? Anybody home?"

Dean grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him out of the recliner, shoving him toward the hall. "Go!" he hissed. "Go hide under the bed and keep the damn pig quiet!"

Sam clapped a hand over his own mouth and his eyes went round. "Oooooh, you're not supposed to say that word!"

"GO!" Dean growled, pointing down the hall as the person knocked again.

Once he heard the bedroom door shut, Dean opened the door just a crack, with the chain lock still in place, holding the shotgun full of rock salt behind the door where someone outside couldn't see.

Of course it was Mr. Johnson.

"Hey, you remember me?" the man asked. "I live down at the end of the road, and one of my piglets is gone missing. You wouldn't happen to have seen it, would you?"

"Nope," Dean answered, trying to push the door shut. "Never seen any piglets."

The man held the door open. "You know, when I walked up to your door, I thought I heard a pig squeal. Can I come in and talk to your parents for a minute?"

"It must have been your pig." Dean replied, then mentally kicked himself. "I mean, it must have been your pig off in the woods or something. There are no pigs in the house here."

"Well, you know, if you were to see the pig and bring it back, I might give a reward for its safe return. Maybe $20." Mr. Johnson offered.

Sam came barreling down the hall. "No! You can't take him back and make bacon out of him!"

"Sam!" Dean shouted.

"No!" Sam repeated, trying to push the door closed with both hands.

"I think I need to talk to your parents." Mr. Johnson insisted.

"Sam, stop!" Dean shouted. "Go sit on the couch!"

Sam hung his head and walked slowly across the room.

Dean unlatched the chain, opened the door, and stepped out, closing it behind him.

"Look," he began. "My dad's at work and my little brother didn't mean to take the pig. He petted it and gave it some cereal and it crawled under the fence and started following him. I was trying to make him bring it back, really. Will you please just take the pig home and not call the police?"

"Why would I call the police?" Mr. Johnson answered.

"Because they put you in jail for stealing farm animals!" Dean cried. "Sam's little. He's only six. I promise he won't do it again! Just please don't make them take him away!"

Mr. Johnson knelt down and put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "No, son. I won't let them put your little brother in jail. Pigs will follow someone with food. But I need my pig back."

Dean sighed and nodded. He opened the door, and told Sam to go get the pig.

"Nooooooo!" Sam wailed, and burst into tears. "I don't want you to make Wilbur into bacon!"

"Sam?" Mr. Johnson stepped into the doorway. "That pig isn't Wilbur. Her daddy's name is Wilbur. This little pig is a girl, and her name is Sweet Susie."

Sam frowned. "A girl pig?"

"Yeah," Mr. Johnson nodded. "And we're not raising her to make bacon out of her. She's my daughter's 4H project. We're going to raise Susie up and take her to the fair for the livestock show."

"Really?" Sam scrunched his face up. "Like Wilbur went to the fair?"

"Yep, just like that." the man nodded. "Everyone will come to see what a pretty pig she is."

Sam shoved off the couch and trudged down the hall, returning with the piglet in his arms.

"She is a pretty pig." He agreed as he handed the piglet to Mr. Johnson.

The farmer smiled. "You know Sam, if you wanted to stop by sometimes on your way home from school and see her, Susie would probably like it. She loves attention."

"Can I go see her, Dean?" Sam asked hopefully.

"Well, maybe." Dean eyed the farmer suspiciously. "I think you should come home and wait, and then when I get home we can maybe go see her."

"Just come up to the house and knock," Mr. Johnson said. "Make sure an adult comes down to the barn with you. The big hogs and the ostriches can be nasty."

Sam nodded and waved goodbye.

Dad noticed a week or so later that Sam didn't eat bacon anymore, but Dean just waved Charlotte's Web and shook his head.


End file.
